296 NATURAL HISTORY 



make out till lately. I am assured now that it is the stone- 

 curlew (Charadrius oedicncmus) .* Some of them pass over 

 or near my house almost every evening after it is dark, from 

 the uplands of the hill and North Field, away down towards 

 Dorton, where, among the streams and meadows, they find 

 a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly by night are obliged 

 to be noisy; their notes often repeated become signals or 

 watch- words to keep them together, that they may not stray 

 or lose each the other in the dark. 



The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are 

 curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they 

 return in long strings from the foraging of the day, and 

 rendezvous by thousands over Selborne Down, where they 

 wheel round in the air, and sport and dive in a playful 

 manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a 

 loud cawing, which,, being blended and softened by the 

 distance that we at the village are below them, becomes a 

 confused noise or chiding ; or rather a pleasing murmur, 

 very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of 

 a pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing 

 of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a 

 pebbly shore. When this ceremony is over, with the last 

 gleam of day, they retire for the night to the deep beecnfn 

 woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little girl 

 who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on such an 

 occurrence, in the true spirit of physico-theology, that the 

 rooks were saying their prayers ; and yet this child was much 

 too young to be aware that the Scriptures have said of the 

 Deity that <f he feedeth the ravens who call upon Him." 



(Edicnemus crepitans, Temminck. ED. 



